the microscopy stuck

[MicroInspector]

Have any of you seem can't find any thing new to
Put under your microscope?
You been to most places and done that and than
You find your self stuck.
I have been doing water sampling from the local srp canals
and at lakes .
Now trying to get some microorganisms from sandy soil sample from my past place where I been.
Sigh what to find next?

[hkv]

Try to collect a few water samples in glass jars and let them develop by themselves. Make sure you take some of the plants in the water along with the water and perhaps some mud/sand from the bottom. Add nutrition depending on what direction you want the samples to develop. For example some nutrition for flowers to grow algae. Or just hay infusion or similar. Google that. The development of the jars are very interesting to follow and you can see changes every day or week as new life emerge.

I have had a sample since august and it still changes every week. 2-3 weeks ago I had plenty of cyanobacteria. Now they are gone. Last week and this week I have tons of Pediastrum. I have a LED grow light that gives light 6 hours a day. Plenty of fun if you are a geek as most of us here.

[charlie g]

Follow your outdoor 'bird bath' through the seasons..terrific microscopy!

Or follow a 'bottle on a slant' indoors ...terrific microscopy...and stock that bottle with a wee bit of moss clump and duck weed.

charlie guevara

[Tom Jones]

MicroInspector,

Stuck? Really? Turn you imagination and curiosity loose!

If you can get it under the objective, hold it still and and figure out how to light it, pretty much ANYTHING is fair game. That gives you effectively an infinite number of choices .

Experiment! You can spend your entire career looking at things you find in your yard. If you live in an apartment, look in the closest park for several careers' worth. Look in the gutter, look on the floor, look on the sidewalk, look at paper, look at pictures, look at the surface of pieces of metal, look at the junk food you're eating. Leave it out for a few days and look at the mold growing on it. Look at everything in different ways. Stain it differently, slice it differently, or light it differently. Use polarizers and color filters. Look at feathers, live insects, dead insects, dead insect parts and try to figure out how they work, or why they work the way they do. Look at everything multiple times because initially you will overlook interesting details.

Go outside, mark off a square foot of the floor, the lawn, the sidewalk, the edge of a pond or stream, the trunk of a tree, the dirt under any plant, dirt nowhere near any plant, even the roadway (watch out for cars ). Grab a magnifying glass and examine every bit of it for things to put under your microscope. Map out what you find to see if there is a reason for the way things are distributed in that plot. If you use transparent tape to pick up the small stuff, you can put it directly onto a slide and either look through the tape or flip the slide over and look at it from the back. You can store these semi-permanent slides a long time depending on the material. If you want to use high magnification, put the tape onto a coverslip and that onto a slide. Look through the coverslip.

Look at rocks, sand, dirt, sticks, leaves, roots, fungus, pollen and debris of any kind. Break or tear things and look at the edges. Look on your body, your clothes, your shoes. Look at fabric. Look at your money. Look at the screen of your cell phone. Make saturated solutions of salt, sugar, aspirin, or anything you can dissolve then put a drop on a slide under a coverslip and watch the crystals grow. Wake up and look bloody everywhere.

And as for "pond water" or lake water, or stream water, or gutter water, or ocean water, or sewer water, the biology of all those places and those you've visited changes every day, and you will never live long enough to begin to see all the really, really cool things that live there no matter how hard you try, or how much time you spend. Hell, it's estimated there are more than 100,000 different species of diatoms alone, and diatoms are everywhere it's wet.

And don't just look at things. Try to identify them and figure out how and why they do what they do. Use your cell phone camera to take pictures to document and compare whatever you see. Take notes and make diagrams. Imagine you're at a crime scene and you need to identify and document all the little things in your room that might be tied to the person that broke in and swiped everything but your microscope. It's called "trace evidence" and you might be able to learn who did it based upon what you find.

That nice little corner charlie g just posted a picture of, plants, bird bath and all, could keep you busy year round.

Your microscope is the key to an endless stream of amazement..... There is more cool stuff to look at than you can ever imagine. Ever. Really. Ever.

If you have a microscope and you're ever again bored, it's your fault.

Tom

[Crater Eddie]

I was cleaning up my yard yesterday, and when I picked up the bowl of my birdbath that I had stored upside-down in the corner of the garden, the inside was covered with dried flakes of algae! You can bet that I collected some of these flakes and put them into a jar of water in my lab room, I'm sure that in a few days it will be teaming with life.
My point is, that opportunities for microscopic investigation are everywhere, all you have to do is look.
CE

[MicroInspector]

Well I did collect some sandy soil from my past trip, just waiting to what comes up in the water.

I see what else I can dig up.

[apochronaut]

I have a question. where do you live? it's somewhere in the south, isn't it?

[MicroInspector]

Phoenix Arizona U.S.

[apochronaut]

very dry, so your options related to organisms that thrive on humidity are less so, than in many other places but you don't face chronic freezing , this time of year . try some of these .

incubate some potato peels in some water and a bit of sugar. get some that are dirty, not washed.
likewise fruit peels
stick a q-tip or coathanger down your sink drain and bring up some of the residue clinging to the walls of the pipe up.
check out the bottom gasket of your fridge. there should be a world cup of aspergillus fungus going on there, right now.
tongue scraping.
eaves troughs have low spots, there should be at least some dry sediment in there. incubate it in water.
crotches of trees. often there u=is a trap of organic matter in there.
walls of storm drains.
as always, drainage from house plants.
incubate, dead leaves indoors. add some nutrient, a little sugar.
pieces of bark or moss scrapings from bark, set in water and incubated , for a while.

[MicroInspector]

OK I know I should took a blood sample from the fish I caught before
I guess hunger is powerful thing lol
I wonder if plant sap might have cells I have some aloe .

[zzffnn]

Maybe try mineral photography: http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... &start=120

With those, you usually don't need an objective more powerful than 20x.

Mineral samples are not cheap though, and may need to be cut/grinded.

[Crater Eddie]

I have relatives in Phoenix. On a visit there several years ago we spent an enjoyable day hiking up and around Camelback Mountain. Lots of great scenic areas around and close to Phoenix. But very dry, I will agree.
CE

[MicroInspector]

Have you forgoton about swamp places I been to?
Right now trying get more microbes with experiments.

[ebenbildmicroscopy]

While I've never done this, I've always intended to try after reading about it in a science experiment book I bought at a book fair in elementary school - years ago: Article explaining how to collect micrometeorites

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5984951/how-to-c ... r-backyard

[billbillt]

This is part of the fun of microscopy... Just sit back and observe the world around you.. You will soon see plenty to look at!..

BillT